Once upon a time, a twist ending was a very special thing that was broken out because the screenwriter had some exceptionally clever idea to redefine an entire story and give the whole affair an extra dramatic heft. Nowadays, we all expect a twist ending in pretty much everything, especially horror films and thrillers, which […]

I like to think that I am an easily-satisfied viewer of horror films. A concept that’s creepy enough to make the hairs on your neck prickle a bit, good & moody cinematography, imaginative and well-executed gore effects, some iconic imagery, and ideally have the whole thing scary enough that I catch myself thinking about it […]

I have no idea why it surprises me, but there’s another goddamn J-horror remake. Except this one is actually a remake of a Thai film, but it’s pretty much just a Thai rip-off of the J-horror style, and it’s set in Japan (the remake, not the original), and there’s not such a thing as T-horror, […]

Perhaps I am mistaken, and I hope someone will advise me if I am, but I believe that The Eye makes history as the first in the crazy glut of Asian horror remakes over the last few years to come from a Hong Kong original, the Pang Brothers’ Gin gwai (released in the anglophone world […]

A beginning, an ending: the first American release of 2008, One Missed Call is, at least this is my hope, the last spasm of the dead corpse of J-Horror remakes. Or maybe not. But no matter, it’s a derivative and clumsy thing that surely means the end is near, for no genre capable of crapping […]

The auteur-theorist in me wants for the director of a film to always, always be responsible for the final product, and that is what makes The Messengers doubly frustrating: it’s a brilliantly-directed horror movie in which nearly everything that isn’t the direction or cinematography – the acting, the editing, the sound design, the writing and […]

One day I might actually stop spending money on unscary horror movies that I know are going to be bad. That day hasn’t come yet. And the latest milestone on this particular road to hell is Pulse, another damn J-Horror remake, this time of the film that more or less birthed the genre. I never […]